The home: its work and influenceGilman, Charlotte Perkins
General
The home: its work and influence
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Home
"But," we protest, "all this is for the child--the meals, the well-kept
house, the clothes--the whole thing!"
Yes? And in what way do the meals we so elaborately order and prepare,
the daintily furnished home, the much-trimmed clothing, contribute to
the body-growth, mind-growth, and soul-growth of the child? The
conditions of home life are not those best suited to the right growth
of children. Infant discipline is one long struggle to coerce the
growing creature into some sort of submission to the repressions, the
exactions, the arbitrary conventions of the home.
In broad analysis, we find in the representative homes of to-day a
condition of unrest. The man is best able to support it because he is
least in it; he is part and parcel of the organised industries of the
world, he has his own special business to run on its own lines; and he,
with his larger life-basis, can better bear the pressure of
house-worries. The wife is cautioned by domestic moralists not to annoy
her husband with her little difficulties; but in the major part of
them, the economic difficulties, she must consult him, because he pays
the bills.
When a satisfactory Chinaman is running a household; when the money is
paid, the care deputed, the whole thing done as by clock-work, this
phase of home unrest is removed; but the families so provided for are
few. In most cases the business of running a home is a source of
constant friction and nervous as well as financial waste.
Quite beyond this business side come the conditions of home life, the
real conditions, as affecting the lives of the inmates. With great
wealth, and a highly cultivated taste, we find the members of the
family lodged in as much privacy and freedom as possible in a home, and
agreeing to disagree where they are not in accord. With great love and
highly cultivated courtesy and wisdom, we find the members of the
family getting on happily together, even in a physically restricted
home. But in the average home, occupied by average people, we find the
members of the family jarring upon one another in varying degree.
That harmony, peace, and love which we attribute to home life is not as
common as our fond belief would maintain. The husband, as we have seen,
finds his chief base outside, and bears up with greater or less success
against the demands and anxieties of the home. The wife, more closely
bound, breaks down in health with increasing frequency. The effect of
home life on women seems to be more injurious in proportion to their
social development. Our so-called "society" is one outlet, though not a
healthful one, through which the woman seeks to find recreation,
change, and stimulus to enable her to bear up against a too continuous
home life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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